In the first decade of the twentieth century medical practice in the United States remained much as it had been throughout the nineteenth century — a curious mixture of the effective and what is now known to be the ridiculous. Luckily, the ratio of the former to the latter had been changing toward more effective patient care. General public health was also improving. Urban cleanwater supplies and the disposal of human, animal, and industrial wastes had increasingly come under the control of public health agencies in the preceding century. Sanitation engineering had developed as a specialty to aid these efforts. Vaccinations for some diseases were becoming widespread.
When chemist Charles Eliot became president of Harvard University in 1869, he proposed radical changes in the medical school. Eliot wanted to raise admission standards to weed out the kind of.....
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